‘Beyond Bowling Together’

Social capital is, “a resource that can be accumulated and whose availability allows people to create value for themselves or others.” The diagram in the reading shows how activities and interactions lead to social capital which leads to more activities and interactions. It can be an exponential cycle. The article continues with statistics showing the decline in social capital today and discusses how we can use technology to try and change that decline. “The concept of social capital provides a way of thinking about intermediate states, immediate effects of people’s interactions that have long- term consequences.” With this it continues with examples of various sites which help to connect large groups of people used for the purpose of getting the message out faster and to more people. This is beneficial and in some cases showed results of people “jumping out of the screen” and back into face-to-face settings.